Ukip leader Nigel Farage’s face is projected on to Broadcasting House, London, as the BBC exit poll predicts a haul of two seats for the party; in the end, it secured only one. Photograph: Rex Shutterstock

Gripping a can of lager and muttering darkly about the foreigners on the east side of town, Pete Johnson makes an unlikely champion for electoral reform.

Election result is ‘nail in the coffin’ of first-past-the-post voting system

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Standing near Margate’s Winter Gardens – where 24 hours earlier his MP of choice, Nigel Farage, had learned that he had failed to win the seat of South Thanet – Johnson said the outcome of the general election had left him furious. “I might as well have bought a ticket for the lottery instead of voting, the good it’s done. It’s a conspiracy to keep Ukip quiet,” said the 32-year-old.

Johnson was one of 3,881,129 people to put a cross on the ballot paper in support of Farage’s Ukip party, a sizeable show of support that managed to amass one solitary MP.

Advocates for electoral reform say that the outcome has again exposed the limitations of the first-past-the-post system, prompting urgent calls for a change to the way Britain votes.

Shared misfortune at the polls has also raised the possibility of an unlikely alliance between Ukip and the Green party. Between them, the two amassed more than five million votes but secured just two MPs.

Farage told the Observer yesterday that the initial reaction among Ukip supporters to the meagre parliamentary reward of their vote went beyond despair. “The feeling out there is anger, not disillusionment. We’ve got half the Labour vote [almost 9.4 million], yet we’ve got this outcome.”

Speaking outside the Winter Gardens, Kent’s biggest banqueting centre, where the previous morning he learned that the 16,026 people who voted for him had voted in vain, Farage said the first-past-the-post system had yielded a negative campaign in terms of the political debate. “It was a policy-free zone, who will get into bed with who and such,” he said.

Asked whether Ukip would consider officially teaming up with the Greens to campaign for electoral reform, Farage was coy, saying: “We don’t see eye to eye on many issues, but on this one ...”

He is quick to point out that, despite having just one MP, in terms of the share of the vote Ukip was the third largest party behind Labour and the Conservatives. Overall, Ukip secured 12.6% of the vote, an increase of 9.5 percentage points from the 2010 election, the largest of any major party and more than three times the size of the SNP’s improvement.

Ukip came second in 118 of the 650 parliamentary seats. A map of Britain illustrating second-place voting patterns reveals purple splashed across middle England, suggesting that if the current system were replaced with the alternative vote (AV), where voters rank the candidates in order of preference, Ukip would fare considerably better.

Similarly, Farage’s party would become a genuine parliamentary force under a proportionally representative system. Under proportional representation, Britain’s political landscape shifts radically: Ukip suddenly has 82 seats and the Greens 24. Conversely, the cohort of SNP MPs shrinks to 31, while the Tories lose 90 seats, with the likely result being that Britain would have been faced with another coalition instead of a Conservative majority.

Tea towels featuring Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, on sale at a Ukip election meeting in Ramsgate, Kent, in the South Thanet constituency. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Such alternative outcomes are articulated in a palpable sense of marginalisation among Ukip supporters on the streets of Margate. Monica Campbell, who is retired and says immigration has made parts of Margate a no-go zone, said: “You just feel let down by your vote meaning nothing. It’s a shame for Nigel that his support has not counted.”Brian Walsh, a 56-year-old who describes himself as between jobs, said: “It’s very unfair to Farage. It seems to me like he has been a victim of something deeply unfair.”

Farage remains optimistic, saying the number of Ukip voters confirms that the party can continue to grow, and he believes the Labour vote in the north is of England particularly vulnerable.

The current system accentuates differences. It looks like everyone in Scotland voted SNP, yet only half actually have

Will Brett, Electoral Reform Society

“The next phase of Ukip’s development will be in the north and Midlands – from Birmingham to Hadrian’s Wall – targeting Labour voters and no-voters. That’s a big area for us,” said Farage.

Away from the streets of Margate, there are signs that the British public also feels that the election results have made the case for electoral reform undeniable; 30,000 people signed a petition supporting change to the voting system in the first five hours after it was launched at midday last Friday – 100 people a minute.

Will Brett of the Electoral Reform Society, which organised the petition, said the fact that five million votes had yielded just two MPs suggested a “constitutional crisis”. He added: “The current electoral system accentuates differences – divides – so it looks like everyone in Scotland has voted SNP, yet only half actually have.”

Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green party, told the Observer that the current voting system meant there was always one guaranteed loser even before voting began. “I’ve been saying for some time that it would be the first-past-the-post electoral system that would be the absolute loser from this election. And that’s been very clear.”

A growing consensus agrees with Bennett and Farage’s Margate supporters that the current voting mechanism – which was conceived to produce a majority in a two-party system – is now outdated. Farage may have gone, for now at least, but one potential legacy of his election campaign may precipitate a change in how Britain votes.